A Very Special "This American Life"

I haven’t been able to listen to the show as regularly since I live in Milwaukee and don’t have a 90-minute drive a few times a week. But I digress.

The episode from March 28 was called, “The Audacity of Government.” What it dealt with most of all is the way that the Bush Administration has very shrewdly, very carefully, and very frighteningly reinterpreted the way that executive power can be used in the United States and how and when the Constitution applies to the president. These are issues that are easy to overlook if you’re not directly affected by them, but they do cut to the core of what sort of democracy we want to have (and what sort President Bush has set the precedent for us to have). In my mind, this is something that should be central to the current presidential campaign, because of some of the power seized by Bush isn’t returned immediately, it’s never going back, and the way that we govern ourselves will have been fundamentally changed.

Anyway, I get my TAL via podcast, but for now, you’ll need to stream this episode over the web. I HIGHLY reccommend doing so. This was one of the best ones I’ve ever heard.